Kineas was already stripping the corpse of the man at his feet. He ripped the shield off the man’s arm, tearing at the straps, hacking with his blade at the dead man’s shield arm — the shield’s porpax caught on the dead man’s wrist and hand, a ring, a bracelet — Kineas pulled, shouting curses — the shield came free. Darius backed a step as an armoured man charged him. Kineas, uncovered, whirled, cutting with his sword, still trying to get the shield over his own arm. He cut low, cut high and met his opponent’s shield both times. Desperate, he tried a school dodge — he backed a step, placed a foot on his opponent’s shield and pushed.
The man fell back. Not a gymnasium-trained man, or he’d have known the trick. Kineas pushed back through the door. Darius was above him on the stairs. The shield dropped on to his forearm, ripping flesh, and the grip came into his left hand.
‘When your Kelt goes down, we’re finished,’ Darius said. Carlus was three rooms behind them, his bellows audible even through the stone. Kineas heard the tense humour in the Persian’s voice. ‘I rather enjoy having you on my side, though.’
Kineas had to laugh at that. ‘Stay on my shield side and get anyone who tries to pass me,’ he said. ‘None of them are your match. We’ll get through this.’ He turned his head and gave the younger man a broad smile.
Darius straightened up. He met Kineas’s torch-lit glance. ‘I was tempted…’ he began.
Kineas grunted and pushed forward through the door, ignoring whatever confession the younger man was considering. ‘Guard me!’ he called.
The men on the other side didn’t expect him to attack. He pushed — shield in the face, cut low, push — and they fell back. His second back cut, luckier or more accurate than the others, cut a dactylos above a guardsman’s shield, the point slashing through his eyes and the bridge of his nose so that he fell dead between breaths, never seeing the blow that stole his life.
‘Athena!’ Kineas roared with the whole weight of his chest.
Confused shouts beyond the wall.
‘Athena!’ He bellowed again, and cut, pushed, pushed again. Darius was covering his side along the wall, thrusting with reckless energy to force his shielded opponent back.
Kineas flicked his shield out, caught another man’s shield with his own rim and pulled. Then his sword licked out, thrusting into the man’s chest. He thrust too hard and his borrowed sword fouled, caught on a rib. He kicked, pulled, pushed with his shield as the dying man screamed.
The sword broke at the hilt, leaving Kineas with a hand’s-breadth of iron.
Too late to hesitate.
He threw the hilt into his next opponent’s face. Then, using a pankration move learned from Phocion, he lunged, throwing his shield leg back, and his empty sword hand grasped the rim of the next man’s shield and used it as a lever, ripping the arm in a circle and breaking it. He hammered his shield into the man’s undefended face as he fell, grabbed for the man’s sword and missed. The man’s sword clattered against the cobbles of the floor, vanished in the darkness. A spear punched into his shield, penetrating the bronze surface and embedding in the wood lining. Kineas used his superior leverage to rip the shield free. Again the spear came at him, this time raking his shin because he couldn’t see it coming low. He stepped back and the spearman came forward, the point of a three-man wedge that filled the corridor.
Darius was still fighting a man from the last rush. He gave a shout and his opponent screeched as Darius cut off his hand. The man backed away, blood spurting from the stump, and the three spearmen lost several heartbeats as they tried to cover him.
‘Sword!’ Kineas said. He put his hand back.
Darius slapped his own sword into the open hand.
Just like that.
Kineas stepped forward, took the lead man’s spearhead on his shield where he could feel it and pushed, fouling the man’s weapon. The man set his feet and pushed back, his mates helping him. Kineas felt the strain and tilted his shield, bent his knees and rolled low, passing his shield under the lip of his opponent’s, kneeling on the damp flagstone. He cut low, felt an impact and stood up, pushing with his legs as Darius came up to guard his back, and the lead man staggered back, shouting that he was cut, and the rest broke, fleeing as best they could from the terror of the darkness and the blood.
Darius rose next to him, having found the sword of the man whose wrist he’d severed.
‘Thanks,’ Kineas said. The daimon of combat left him, and his knees began to shake. He was alive! He almost fell. His chiton was drenched in sweat.
‘Think nothing of it,’ Darius said in court Persian. He was grey, but he managed a smile. ‘Could I have my sword back, do you think?’
Kineas met his eye. They exchanged swords, and something more.
Between them, with shaking hands, they got the postern open. Instead of fleeing, they admitted Kineas’s guardsmen, who, drawn by his shouts, were already tearing at the door from the outside. And then, leaving four men under Sitalkes to hold the gate and sending a mounted man to the camp, Kineas led the rest of them back into the citadel for the Kelt.
They found him alive, cleared the corridor in front of him and retreated from a volley of arrows. Carlus was wounded in more places than Kineas could count in the dark, and he was no longer smiling.
‘You come!’ he said, six or seven times, before he passed out. He fell a few feet from the postern and no one could carry him, so they pulled him to one side and prepared to hold the corridor, piling tables and trunks against the walls as cover from arrows.
‘You should go, sir,’ Sitalkes said.
‘Yes,’ said Darius. He was still bleeding, despite a linen wrap, and his pallor had reached a dangerous level. He spoke as if sleepwalking.
Kineas longed to go, but his own sense of himself as a man wouldn’t permit it. ‘No,’ he said.
They waited for a rush of guardsmen. Twice, men peeked around the far corner of the corridor, bronze glinting in the fitful light of the cressets. The nearest one was burning down, past the pitch to the solid wood that burned faster but gave less light. Pine wood smoke and ordure scents mixed, and smoke began to fill the corridor.
An arrow whispered out of the dark. It glanced off Sitalkes’ cavalry breastplate and ripped across another man’s bridle hand before embedding itself in an upturned table.
They all crouched low, as much to get their heads out of the smoke as to avoid the arrows.
‘Get ready,’ Kineas said.
‘Listen!’ Darius said, and collapsed, his limbs loosening all at once so that he slumped forward and his head rang as it hit a table.
‘Shit,’ said Sitalkes. He and one of the Keltoi grabbed the Persian under the arms and pulled him out of the line and back to the relative safety of the door.
‘I hear it too,’ said another man. ‘Fighting!’
Now Kineas could hear it. There was fighting somewhere else — Ares! What in Hades was going on? He rose to his feet and leaned out of the postern gate. There was movement on the slope below him, a line of shapes climbing the hill. He watched them for a long moment — one of the longest of his life — and then he identified something about the set of the cloak and the particular movements of the lead man.
‘Diodorus!’ he called.
In moments, the postern was crowded with armoured men — dismounted cavalry. Andronicus took command of all the Keltoi. Diodorus embraced Kineas.
‘We heard you were dead!’ he said.
‘Not dead yet.’ A roar shook the rafters. ‘What in Hades?’
‘Before we got your message, Philokles and Niceas said that something was wrong. They’re rushing the main gate.’
‘Ares and Aphrodite! They’ll be slaughtered!’ Kineas looked around wildly, even as Nicanor pushed forward, almost devoid of breath from the exertion of climbing the steepest face of the hill, Kineas’s helmet and breastplate clasped against his paunch.